


Engagement Announcements

by Aproclivity



Category: The Black Tapes Podcast
Genre: Charlie is a psychic too, Charlie is clearly the smartest Strand, F/M, Fluff, Other, The Strands are always complicated, What do you do after the end of the world? You tell your daughter you're getting married, charlie ships it but, i'm sure it's fine., oh shit they saved the world but the how doesn't matter, post end of the world fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-30
Updated: 2020-05-30
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:34:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24460630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aproclivity/pseuds/Aproclivity
Summary: Staring down an angry dragon goddess at the end of the world? Easy. Telling your much older partner’s semi-estranged daughter who’s your own age that you’re going to be getting married? Much harder than that.
Relationships: Alex Reagan/Richard Strand, Charlie Strand & Richard Strand
Comments: 2
Kudos: 15





	Engagement Announcements

**Author's Note:**

  * For [porgsploitation](https://archiveofourown.org/users/porgsploitation/gifts).



> Happy birthday @porgsploitation! I hope this hits your Richard and Alex and Charlie fluffy spot! Thanks for being such an awesome friend!

“Okay. You need to sit down. You’re making me nervous. And considering she hates me already I’m definitely already a nervous wreck.” Alex just watches Richard as he paces up and down the hotel room floor, nervously twisting and tightening the knot in his tie. 

“I’m not nervous,” he almost but not quite snaps back at her in what she calls his professor ‘fuck off’ voice. “I’ve got no reason to be nervous!” Richard’s voice softens after a moment and he goes to stand in front of where Alex is sitting on the end of their bed. His hands twist up with hers and he just glances quickly down at them and then to her face before he adds: “we have no reason to be nervous. She doesn’t hate you. Charlie is just...very like me.” Unable to keep the small look of pride off his face when she says it. For all of Richard’s faults (and Alex could categorize them to an absurd degree) his stubbornness may be the one that’s the most like herself and it’s something that she knows that Charlie Strand has in _spades_. 

“She was angry. She’s not angry anymore.” There’s a pause and Richard’s voice drops before he just adds softly “I hope.” There’s another pause before he speaks again, and his lips just press against the top of her forehead for a moment. “Alex there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you about Charlie. Something that I didn’t lie to you about but that she asked me not to say. After so many years, Alex I needed to honor her request. It’s not because I didn’t...because I don’t love you or trust you, it’s because she _asked_.”

Alex just looks at him a little bit puzzled but she just adds. “Okay…”

“Okay.” He says but Richard sighs it in that way that he does before he continues. “Ever since Charlie was small, she always was... Well. She was psychic.” It says a lot about the last few weeks that Richard Strand, the skeptic is able to say those words aloud and Ales knows it. He hasn’t been able to say the word about himself despite everything but he attributes it easily to Charlie. “I tried to make her see reason, be _rational_ but I could never do it in the same way that my father could. Instead I just chalked everything up to her being good with body language, to having an excellent memory.”

Sighing heavily, Richard just sits on the bed and automatically takes her hands for comfort, holding onto them tightly. “That was what we fought about on the last day that she was with me. When we were looking for Coralee. Charlie was trying to use her gifts and she was leading us in a circle. I snapped at her and told her that it wasn’t real. She snapped at me and told me that if I loved her, if I loved Coralee, that I would use my gifts to find her. I became angry. I didn’t hit her, but I know that you don’t need words for violence. I laid into her with vitriol, the likes of which I had never said to her. I told her that her foolishness was likely killing Coralee.”

Alex flinches for him as he continues. “She didn’t say another word to me. Instead she turned around and just led me directly to the car. She didn’t say a word as she got into the back seat. I was angry, and I didn’t apologize. Neither of us said anything. When we went back to the hotel, she was gone in the morning. There was just a note in it with two lines. That she didn’t have a father anymore and she was going to live with her grandparents.” Richard just sighs and buried his face in their combined hands for a moment, and Alex just lets him have his silence and the tears that went along with it. 

“I should have fought it. I could have fought it. My attorney told me to fight it but I was so angry and she was so angry that I didn’t. I _couldn’t_. I knew what believing in all of this for all those years had done to my father and…” Richard let’s the sentence drop off with a sigh and Alex just rests her head against his shoulder. 

“The first time I heard my daughter’s voice in twenty years was when she called into your show. When she was so angry. Her voice _sounded_ the same and it was like I was in a time capsule. I didn’t think it would be possible that she would have sounded the same but she did. June kept me abreast of what she was doing. There were emails from June. June was good about that sort of thing even if Laurence wanted to skin me alive. When she graduated from high school, when Charlie chose her college. She got into Yale but refused to go because she didn’t want to have my name there. Instead she went to NYU for language. I had taught her Latin and Greek when she was a child and that’s what she’d majored in: classical language. That’s why she’s in Italy. She works for the Vatican in their archive. Her graduate degrees,” Richard sounds proud because like himself she has two of them. “Are in classical languages and artifact restoration.”

Alex just pauses after a moment and she can’t help but to ask: “Richard do you think… I mean Simon got the Horn from there.”

“Yes. She helped him. When she was in college, when she was an _adult_...” There’s an emphasis on those words, as if they somehow made what happened better. Alex doesn’t know if it does or not, but she also knows that it’s not her place to comment on them. So, she doesn’t say anything as Richard just continues, “Coralee got in contact with her. Coralee has always encouraged her gifts even when I denied them. She was...training her to use them. The training only intensified once she was in college.”

“It sounds like she’s got three phDs then,” Alex just says lightly and Richard gives him his huffy laugh and kisses her gently. 

“But yes. Coralee recruited her into the resistance that she had built against Warren. She knows Simon and was helping him. She got him into the Vatican and to the Horn. I think anyway. She refused to talk with me about her work with her mother. She just laid it out for me in an entirely matter of fact way when I saw her.” Richard just sighs again and he traces his fingers through Alex’s long hair. 

“It was a shock when I saw her. I had gone to tell her about Coralee and Charlie told me that she knew. That she had always known. We fought about that. But then Charlie showed me what she’d been working on. How deep things had really gone with the people who were working for Warren.” Richard just sighs softly. “Alex, the contact I gave you for Dr. Martindale? It was never her. It was Charlie. Charlie who was relaying the information through her partner.”

“Oh.” Alex’s voice is soft. “We put her in danger then. Both of them.” 

“No Alex.” Richard catches her chin and raises it up to meet his eyes. “Charlie chose to put herself into danger. Do you remember the speech you gave me in Geneva the night before?” She doesn’t need to ask before what. There’s a line around before and now and Alex just nods as she traces her fingers over the fading bruises and the nearly healed scratches on his face. They’re going to scar and they both know it, but Richard had refused the plastic surgeon that the hospital in Geneva had offered. Alex had too for the gouges that the dragon had made down her arm. 

“Charlie made her own choices. Just like you did. Just like I did. And she made her choices far before I even met you, Alex. You aren’t to blame for that.” He kisses her then gently and lightly. “You are entirely too good at taking the blame on yourself my darling Alex.”

“Maybe but I still…” Alex let’s the sentence drop because they both know what she did and Richard just kisses the fingertips on her left hand. 

“The past Alex. It’s done now. We can’t go back, we can only go ahead. But I didn’t want to have any more secrets from you now that you’re actually going to…” Richard’s gaze goes distant for a moment and he gets the look that Alex knows that he gives when he’s using his abilities. It’s actually a very familiar look, one that she’s known for three years even though then it had always been when Richard was in the mania of figuring it out. His gifts were such that he could try and ignore them, but sometimes they come out in a different way. 

It had been his gifts, Richard explained to her on the night before the world hadn’t ended, that had made it impossible for him to ignore her calls. To ever truly leave her alone even when Richard thought that he should. The night before the end of the world hadn’t happened, he had told her of how many times he’d listened to her voicemails, and how long he’d longed for her and how Richard had seen her come so many times that when she was actually there and talking it wasn’t until Ruby had spoken to her that he realized she was _real_. 

“She’s here,” Richard just announces finally, and he comes back to himself to look at Alex who looks at her watch. 

“We’re not supposed to meet her in the lobby for another fifteen minutes.” 

“She’s here and she’s on her way up.” Richard just says softly before he dots a kiss against her forehead as he rises and moves towards the door. He opens it just as the woman comes to it. 

Charlie is tall, like Alex had always thought, and her light brown hair is shorter now, styled in a more professional cut, and also like her father, she’s carrying herself well in a suit. (Alex feels a little more than undressed in the pretty sundress that she’s wearing, but it’s too late for that now.) Her hazel eyes look blue, more like her father’s without the filter of the camera, and there’s a smile on her face that makes her look younger, despite the suit. She’s still not wearing a bit of makeup, and Alex respects that more than she can say. In some ways Alex herself misses that, but right now considering everything, the shadows below her eyes will eventually go away. 

They have to. 

“Hi Dad,” Charlie’s voice is soft when she lingers in the doorway, and she just brushes her pale lips against his cheek for a moment. Alex swears that she can feel Richard’s smile from all the way over here. Whatever else had happened in those three months, Alex knows that it’s good, and she’s so _glad_ of it that it lets off some of the pressure and anxiety from her chest. 

Staring down an angry dragon goddess at the end of the world? Easy. Telling your much older partner’s semi-estranged daughter who’s your own age that you’re going to be getting married? _Much_ harder than that. 

When Charlie comes into the room, and Richard shuts the door behind her, there’s a bit of a coolness in her smile, even though she gives Alex one. “Hi Alex.” Her name is a little warmer than that: a fact for which Alex is extremely grateful. It strikes her then that she’s never really been on this side of the conversation and she’s not at all sure what to do. But Alex rises from the bed and she fights every instinct that she has to offer Charlie a hug. Instead she just extends her hand to the other woman along with a smile. “Hi Charlie,” Alex begins before adding, “it’s good to be able to meet you in person.”

“You too, Alex.” Charlie even seems to mean it, and she looks from Alex to where Richard has come to stand next to both of them, like he’s completing a triangle. Charlie takes Alex’s hand and gives it a firm handshake before looking back to her and then she says softly: “relax Dad. You’re sucking all the air out of the room and you’re going to give Alex a panic attack.”

Oh, so _that_ was the pressure on her chest. Richard looks abashed and he lets out a long slow breath and Alex’s breathing comes out easier. Before Alex can say anything or ask a question Charlie speaks again in a very matter of fact way that Alex is entirely _sure_ that she’d gotten from her father. “Yes. You’re more sensitive to his abilities than anyone else would be. Now that they’re open, they’re always going to find you. It’s tied to love you see.”

Charlie moves to take a seat on the couch that faces the bed and Richard just guides Alex to sit down on the bed where she had been there before when Charlie keeps talking about this. “People like Thomas Warren, those who followed his cult, they had forgotten the origin of the story. They had forgotten what was at the base of it: Tiamat loved Abzu. He was her husband and her lover and they created life. When Ea slain Abzu Tiamat still loved her child. She didn’t want to take vengeance on them for what they’d done but her grief drove her mad. Tiamat loved. It makes sense that her gifts create the strongest connection where people love.”

Alex just frowns as she thinks about it and something passes between Richard and Charlie and she’s not sure what it is, but both of them have the same soft smile on their faces and for all Charlie favors ‘the girl from Canada’ Alex can see just how they’re related, how much they love one another in that one shared look. She’s relieved even as she’s excluded from that. For once, Alex isn’t pressed with the need to _know_ and she understands that Richard’s not the only one who was altered by their facing down the goddess. 

Waiting until they talk before she does, the silence isn’t uncomfortable, but Richard does look abashed when he finally speaks. “Apologies, Alex. I’m still not used to being able to do that.”

“It’s okay, Richard.” It _is okay_ and Alex just adds: “I know how much of a miracle it is to have her here with you.”

“It’s not a miracle, Alex.” Charlie just says softly. “Things needed to happen before we could is all. Eventually you’ll be open enough to do it with him as well.”

“Open enough?” That question Alex is unable to stop, and for a response all she gets from Charlie is Richard’s enigmatic smile. 

“You’ll see. I believe you have something you want to say, Dad?” The smile remains on Charlie’s face when she looks to Richard and for a moment he just reddens and fumbles with his words. 

“Uh. Yes. Quite.” Clearing his throat, he looks to Alex and their entwined hands, and he slides one finger over the antique ring that he’d given her as if for courage. “After everything. After nearly losing her,” his voice is pained, and Alex knows that the memory of what happened is pressing against him and Alex just squeezes his fingers more tightly because she’s here and she’s safe and he’s here and he’s safe and so is Charlie. “I asked Alex to marry me, Charlie. Your mother she…” he pauses for a moment and needs to look to their conjoined hands. “After she got us out and to the hotel the last thing that Coralee did was give me divorce papers. She said that they were long overdue.”

“I know.” Charlie just says with a bright smile on her face. “It’s not like I couldn’t tell how much you loved her when you were here, Dad.” Charlie’s voice is light and teasing and Alex just feels herself coloring and is a little more than relieved to see that Richard is doing it as well. “Besides, anyone who has heard your show knows that she loves you and has for a long time. You were just too dumb to see it.” 

That makes Alex laugh softly but it’s a joyous sort of sound, the tension releasing from her. Charlie doesn’t hate her or think she’s some sort of… whatever it was that someone would call who would sleep with someone for a story. “Of course I don’t, Alex.” Charlie says aloud because it’s easy for Alex to forget that she is so easily read. Tannis had told her in Geneva that she was the easiest person to read that he’d ever met, and that was what made people want to talk to her; to give into that famous Alex Reagan charm. It’s a compliment. She thinks anyway. But it’s still something that Alex is in the adjustment period for.

“Whatever other decisions you made, or the actions you took, or how you ripped us apart in your podcast,” Alex has a pang about that as Charlie explains. “I knew you loved him. We all knew, my mom, Tannis, Warren. I’m pretty sure the only idiots who didn’t know were you and my dad.” 

“I think,” Richard clears his throat on the other side of her, and gently squeezes Alex’s hand when he does it. “That’s a fair assessment.” 

“‘ _A fair assessment._ ’” Charlie just quotes back at him, in that tone that all kids seem to have with their parents--Alex herself has it when she’s talking to her mom sometimes--and Charlie just rolls her eyes. “God, Dad you’re both such freaking nerds.” 

“Well, maybe but…” 

“But it doesn’t matter now,” Alex just says softly, and with a grin on her face. “We _were_ idiots. We _are_ nerds, and we’re going to get married and we wanted to make sure that you were the first person that we told. And that we did it in person. I’m glad that you’re okay with it.” 

Charlie just laughs, and it’s a very familiar huffy sort of laugh that spreads a warmth in Alex’s chest. “All I want is for my Dad to be happy and accept me. It’s all I’ve ever wanted. And you helped with that Alex. You did it.” Charlie rises from the sofa and Alex and Richard do as well. Before she says anything, Charlie just wraps her arms around Alex in a hug, and Richard comes over and hugs both of them. 

To Alex it feels like a blessing. It feels like the completion of a circle. There’s a ghostly feeling of Richard’s lip at her temple, and Alex just hears what he says without words: _Thank you_.

All three of their eyes are wet when they break apart and Charlie laughs softly. “Come on. You need to meet Viola and their son Mateo. Well. He’s my son too but.” Alex gets it. It’s about the pronouns and she nods. 

“I’m excited to meet them. Both of them. How old is Mateo?”

Charlie’s face softens as she mentions her son. “He’s two. He’s basically a cat at this point. Getting into everything. Loves boxes more than anything in the world. Doesn’t matter how much you spend on what’s inside of them—the box it comes from and if he can crawl inside of it is what matters the most.”

“You were the same, you know. No matter what I did you wanted boxes. I thought for sure I was doing something extremely wrong until I met your mother.”

“Well, even if he’s not mine biologically,” Charlie just says with love and fondness in her tone. “He’s definitely _my_ son.” As someone who is adopted, Alex gets it and she just laughs and nods enthusiastically. “Come along, Nonno. Mateo is excited to see you.” 

“I’ve brought him something— _we’ve_ brought him something. I mean. Uh. If it’s alright.” Richard stutters along the words before he leaves for a large and brightly wrapped present. He looks less uncertain when he’s holding it. “We made sure it came in a large box for him.”

Charlie laughs. “He’s going to love it then.” Starting to head towards the door, the woman can’t help but to throw out over her shoulder: “so have you given any thought to what he should call you, Grandma?”

“ _Grandma_?” Alex does a little pale at that. Maybe this isn’t going to be as easy as she thought at all.


End file.
